Cash-for-votes scam: The deadly secrets of sting Singh

Will Amar Singh, the once-formidable kingmaker who saved UPA I during the Nuclear Bill vote in 2008, ever reveal every detail of the cash-for-votes exchange? The Government thought it had buried the facts.On July 16, the Supreme Court ordered the police to reopen investigation, leaving the government jittery.

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Shantanu Guha Ray

August 5, 2011

ISSUE DATE: August 15, 2011

UPDATED: August 7, 2011 19:59 IST

Amar Singh, the Rajya Sabha MP was at the heart of the cash-for-votes exchange. His home was the place from where money was allegedly disbursed to willing MPs.

On July 22, Amar Singh walked into the crime branch of Delhi Police, to a room especially wired to record conversations of suspects. He was half-an-hour early. There was none of the strain normally evident on the face of a person about to face questions from the police. L.N. Rao, additional deputy commissioner of police (special cell), quickly assembled his officers to question Amar Singh. After the mandatory signatures, Amar Singh asked the interrogators a simple question: did they have any evidence for their accusation that he had organised cash to buy support of three BJP MPs, Ashok Argal, Faggan Singh Kulaste and Mahavir Bhagora, during the critical no-confidence motion on July 22, 2008?

Arun Jaitley organised the sting operation.

The officers said they had statements from the BJP MPs to this effect, that Amar Singh had promised them Rs 3 crore each to go against the BJP whip and vote for the motion triggered by a split in the government over the Indo-US nuclear deal. The BJP MPs also said that Sanjeev Saxena, who worked for Amar Singh, told them that they would be given a total advance of Rs 1 crore. Saxena, they added, had also been filmed handing over cash to MPs. Further, on July 22, 2008, in a dramatic moment, these three MPs had rushed into the well of the Lok Sabha displaying the Rs 1 crore to show they had been bribed. They then deposited the cash in the office of the Speaker Somnath Chatterjee. The entire operation was planned by current leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley and executed by L.K. Advani's former aide Sudheendra Kulkarni. It was to be broadcast on CNN-IBN whose editorin-chief Rajdeep Sardesai went on air outside Parliament on July 22, 2008, announcing the impending telecast of his scoop.

BJP MPs allege Patel was working in collusion with SP

The sting was not shown that day. In the evening, Sardesai went on air again saying he had withdrawn the broadcast in the "national interest". He deposited the tapes with the Lok Sabha Speaker and broadcast them 20 days later. The broadcast on August 12, 2008, did not have audio or video evidence of Amar Singh or any Congress leader either handing over cash to the MPs or promising to do so. All it had were visuals of Saxena depositing money on a table in Argal's house and then making a call to Amar Singh, saying "kaam ho gaya". Amar Singh explained this ingeniously, by quoting HRD Minister Kapil Sibal to the crime branch interrogators. Sibal had said, while defending Prime Minister Manmohan Singh against A. Raja, that an accused's statement is not evidence unless backed by proof.

No one doubts that Amar Singh was at the heart of the operation that saved the UPA I government in 2008. In 2011, that political coup could foreshadow the doom of UPA II, since the principal beneficiaries of 2008 are still in power. Amar Singh maintains he is innocent. His opponents are equally certain of his guilt. The moot point now, however, is much larger than the fate of a controversial politician: if Amar Singh, for any reason, chooses to say that money was paid to the MPs to save Manmohan in 2008, it would destroy the prime minister today.

MPs brandishing cash in Parliament

The game has changed thanks to four factors. Amar Singh is no longer associated with Mulayam Singh Yadav and has, in a speech in Etawah, threatened to expose his role in the cash-forvotes scam. The Congress can never be certain of which way Amar Singh will finally swing. An aggressive Supreme Court on July 15, 2011, prompted by a petition from lawyer Prashant Bhushan, pulled up Delhi Police for its shoddy investigation into the cash-forvotes scam-it wants the truth and nothing but the truth. Added to that, one key player, Kulkarni, says he is ready to prove Amar Singh's complicity.

For three years, the government stalled investigations. On July 28, 2008, it formed a parliamentary committee to probe the scandal while the Lok Sabha Speaker asked Delhi Police to initiate a parallel probe. The eight-member committee, headed by V. Kishore Chandra Singh Deo, completed its probe in 11 sittings and submitted its report on November 12, 2008. It said there was no case against Patel and no "clinching evidence against Amar Singh". It said the role of BJP worker Suhail Hindustani, Saxena and Kulkarni should be investigated at length by "an appropriate investigating agency".

The CNN-IBN sting

Singh Deo was recently promoted as Cabinet minister for tribal affairs and panchayati raj, the only outsider from the Congress to get a Cabinet berth. The Delhi Police investigation had, very conveniently, called none of the suspects for interrogation. It remained somnolent even when a WikiLeaks cable surfaced in March 2011 reporting that an American diplomat was shown Rs 50 crore in a treasure chest by a Congress functionary, who boasted that the money was to be used to buy MPs for the vote of no-confidence. The Wikileaks disclosure caused a storm in Parliament. Manmohan claimed that neither the Congress nor the Government had "indulged in any such unlawful act". He did not clarify whether Amar Singh had done so on the Government's behalf. But all was forgotten until the Supreme Court directive again resurrected a ghost that the Congress was certain it had buried.

What really happened? Who was guilty? INDIA TODAY has investigated the scandal and pieced together a story that uncovers many mysteries surrounding what happened that day. Leading the charge against Amar Singh is Kulkarni, one of the suspects in the cash-for-votes scam. Kulkarni, now chairman of the Mumbai chapter of the Mukesh Ambani-funded Observer Research Foundation, is for the first time willing to offer evidence of Singh's connection with Saxena through phone records of calls-it's an association that Amar Singh is now seeking to deny. Kulkarni also has a letter Amar Singh wrote for Saxena's son for admission to a Delhi college. The application form mentions Saxena's occupation as a manager and office address as 27, Lodhi Estate, Delhi, Amar Singh's home. The telephone number mentioned is 32565397, installed at Amar Singh's home. Says Kulkarni, "I still do not understand why Amar Singh was not questioned by the parliamentary panel despite three MPs and me telling them that he was involved in this scam. Everyone knows that Sanjeev Saxena is a close associate of Amar Singh's and has been working for the politician for more than a decade."

In the interrogation by the Delhi Police in the second week of August, Kulkarni will also present evidence of a cover-up, allegedly by Amar Singh. These are photographs of a hoarding which is part of another sting operation offered to Delhi Police on August 3, 2008, by Amar Singh and Uma Bharati, who was then with the Bharatiya Jana Shakti Party. Amar Singh meant to prove that the BJP masterminded the scam. The tape shows Saxena emerging from the home of BJP leader Arun Jaitley at 4 Akbar Road, Delhi, with a bag, allegedly carrying cash. But a BJP hoarding in the background gives the game away because it shows the tape was shot later-it declares Argal to be a "true statesman" for rejecting the bribe. "The hoarding proves the video was shot after the vote was over," says Kulkarni.

Manmohan Singh with Sonia Gandhi

Kulkarni will also make the case that all the tapes recorded by CNN-IBN were not submitted to Somnath Chatterjee on July 26, 2008. "In their statement, the CNN-IBN reporters talk about recording the cash being placed on the table by the BJP MPs. They even said on camera that they have proof of cash being paid to win votes. But the panel did not get those tapes," he says. CNN-IBN's Sardesai denies the charge. "All footage available with us during the course of our investigation has been provided to the parliamentary committee that investigated the issue," says Sardesai, who will also be summoned by the crime branch for interrogation, along with his colleagues who took part in the sting operation.

Sources close to Amar Singh have worked out their answers to Kulkarni's allegations. Amar Singh's basic premise is that the cash-for-votes is not a crime because the three BJP MPs did not vote, an argument not borne out by events. Amar Singh surprised his interrogators when he told them that he was aware that Hindustani, who helped the three MPs meet Saxena, had already admitted to the Crime Branch that he was the lynchpin of the operation and used the MPs to trap Amar Singh and Congress leader Ahmed Patel on camera. Amar Singh also explained in detail to the officers how Hindustani said an effort to record Patel on spy cameras failed the night before the vote at Delhi's Le Meridien hotel. Crime branch officers told Amar Singh that they had tracked bank accounts from where the cash was withdrawn to builders from Haryana and their antecedents were being checked.

Amar Singh is believed to have asked for proof linking him or Patel to any of these accounts. He is believed to have pointed to Kulaste's testimony to the Crime Branch where he says: "I have never met Amar Singh." Kulaste is heard saying on tape: "Paisa kahan se aaya Arunji ko maalum hai (Arun Jaitley knows where the cash came from)." He has also pointed to Saxena's statement to the parliamentary panel and Delhi Police that he got the bag carrying the cash from Jaitley's Akbar Road house. Amar Singh wants Delhi Police to probe Jaitley and Kulkarni who, he claims, hatched the conspiracy along with Hindustani and the news channel. To a question about how Saxena and Samajwadi Party leader Reoti Raman Singh are heard on tape discussing the deal to offer cash to the MPs, Amar Singh insists that at no point do they say the cash is meant to purchase votes. Amar Singh has also testified that the entry of a car carrying two BJP MPs into his house is not proof that he met them on the morning of July 22. He uses that expansive term 'conspiracy' to explain the arrival of this car.

He will be questioned again. The Supreme Court wants the truth: will we ever reach there? Sharp and legitimate questions have been blunted in the confusion of competing, and sometimes misleading, answers by individual players with much to hide. But perhaps nothing is more inexplicable in a sordid story than the behaviour of the parliamentary panel, chaired by Singh Deo.

Singh Deo refused to summon Amar Singh, the man at the heart of the mystery. His reason? It was too "cumbersome" a process, said Deo, to call a member of the Rajya Sabha to a panel of the same Parliament. As explanations go, that takes some beating.

The government of Manmohan Singh has to do better than that if it wants to preserve its credibility.